Du temple de l'art au supermarché de la culture

Abstract

An invention of the Renaissance, the art museum became truly established with the Lumières period. However, a French specificity appeared with the Old Regime, that the French Revolution amplified : centralized State control, in opposition to the Anglo-Saxon tradition, much more marked by private or princely sponsorship. This model, where pedagogic vocation gave way to aesthetic delectation, operated more or less unchanged until the sixties, when widespread upheaval in urbanization conditions upturned the modus operandi, especially since the French museums, less used than their American counterparts to private relations, did not know how to, or could not, resist the fascination of money. Using the examples of the Georges Pompidou Center, the Orsay Museum and the Grand Louvre, the author demonstrates and denounces the union of State sponsorship and marketing, where the pedagogic and democratic project is too often used as an alibi for commercial designs : launched as a mediatic product, the museum becomes a monument, that has to be visited, more than a place of knowledge and pleasure. Whilst cultural success -library, conference series, particularly at Beaubourg -is sometimes welcome, presenting works of art and re-using historic buildings such as the Orsay museum or the Louvre, is much more debatable. Is it possible in a mass and pleasure-driven society to dream of a museum which would pay tribute to the reunion of time and space ?